With the first coup of Alicization coming to an end, we are introduced to what-seems-to-be the main antagonist of the story, Quinella: a highly intellectual and beautiful lady that has been self-proclaimed the Administrator of the Underworld.

Japanese Original Episode Title: 図書室の賢者

Plot

Kirito and Eugeo face off Eldrie and as they start fighting they find out that Eldrie has a Divine Weapon. After managing to injure him with Kirito’s great strategies and their amazing teamwork, Eugeo remembers who Eldrie really is and when he starts listing off different things the Knight has done in the past, Eldrie starts losing control, saying that he has no memories of such things happening. He then falls to the ground, with an unknown purple crystal coming out of his forehead. At that point, another Integrity Knight comes and attacks Kirito and Eugeo with arrows. As they are running to escape, Kirito hears a voice guiding him and leads them into a warp gate that appears in front of them, taking them to a grand library. The woman who teleported them turns out to be the Cardinal System of that world, and knows that Kirito is from the real world. She then explains to him the history of the Underworld, how it all started and who developed the Taboo Index.

Episode Highlights

Fighting Eldrie: I mean, I get the fact that Kirito and Eugeo always have to win because they are the main characters, but come on ‘You will use chains, so I will go easy on you and use my whip.’ This is not just ignorance, overconfidence, or underestimation of your opponents; this is just an excuse to not fight them properly in order for them to win. Come on SAO, you can do better than that!

Kirito no longer feels pain? So, the other Integrity Knight shot a bloody arrow right through his foot and he casually takes it off and starts running like there is no problem? What the hell? Even when he meets the Cardinal he doesn’t even care about his wounds. What level of badass-ery has this kid reached?

‘One of them had selfish desires’: Is this perhaps the dodgy scientist with the long hair that we saw in the last episode? And was that guy Quinella’s ‘father’, that’s why she ended up like that? Or am I missing something here?

Quinella is better than you: I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from a villain with a name that includes the word ‘Queen’ in it. It seems like Quinella was actually the first resident of Underworld to realize that the world was one big RPG, where she could access it with system commands and make herself more powerful. The fact that she banned everyone else from doing the same and then figured out how to access the command database, make herself immortal and merge with the cardinal system to become the ‘Administrator’, is probably the most well thought out villain we have seen in SAO and needless to say that thinking that a virtual program can actually reach by itself that level of intelligence is super creepy.

Themes & Trivia

No episode next week: Remember guys, there will be no episode next weekend! Episode 13 will air on January 6th.

How the hell did she managed to learn English so fast? The anime skipped some information here but because she was the favorite child of her father, she was the first person to be given the calling of ‘Sacred Arts Researcher’, instead of a mundane or lame calling (such as ‘cut a massive tree for the rest of your life). As a result, she was the only one given the opportunity to discover English as a language.

Comments

So after learning about Quinella and her whole story I think it’s pretty safe to assume that that’s the reason why Alice was taken to the capital. As the ‘Administrator’ of the Underworld, she is able to see everything that is happening so maybe she saw how Alice was equally talented as her at performing sacred arts, felt threatened and forced her to trespass the dark territory (remember the scene in the first episode and you will get what I mean), to commit a crime against the Taboo Index and turn her into an Integrity Knight so she can take away her memories. Did I just figured out the whole plot of Alicization?

And one more thing, even though it might be a bit farfetched: Did she purposely gave that tedious calling to Eugeo because she saw his ability to do something with the system’s code (the whole eye – matrix situation)? I am just taking a guess here.

Falling from grace.

I think that the second coup of the Alicization series will be heavily action based since Kirito and Eugeo are basically fugitive criminals and Quinella is like the eye of Sauron for Underworld where she can see everything, so yes there will be a lot of fighting involved for sure. Hopefully the lovely Cardinal will give them their swords back so they can fight back with style.